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So a very uneven distribution of weather in Australia at the moment. I keep hearing about the "drought" but there's no sign of that in Tas at the moment indeed it's persistently wet (though not so much in Hobart itself).
Meanwhile in Tasmania, which is not that far from the fires in NSW, flow rates in the River Derwent have peaked at over 30 million litres per minute.
In rough terms that's enough water coming down in one day to supply Sydney for a month. All going out to sea......
The Pieman, Mersey-Forth, Lake Margaret, Trevallyn and Derwent hydro catchments have all spilled water despite running the associated power stations flat out 24/7 and most of those are still spilling right now. There's a pretty high chance the King scheme will spill within the next few weeks also, the only ones that are sure not to spill being Lake Gordon, Great Lake / Arthurs Lakes and Lake Echo.
So a very uneven distribution of weather in Australia at the moment. I keep hearing about the "drought" but there's no sign of that in Tas at the moment indeed it's persistently wet (though not so much in Hobart itself).
So there's potential for emissions savings and costs savings that are going to waste here and it's technically dead easy to do it with no losers whatsoever unless you count burning less fossil fuels and saving money as a loss.
I thought about putting this in the energy thread but I think here's more appropriate.
In short if we view SA, Vic and Tas collectively then there's solar, wind and hydro going to waste due to lack of demand for power and transmission from Vic to NSW already running at maximum. The sun is shining, the wind is blowing, it's been raining in the hydro catchments, consumption is down = over supply. Electricity at the wholesale level is also worthless at the moment, indeed the price has been negative.
The coal-fired generators have ramped down but are still running so as to avoid shutting down. Can't do that because just a few hours from now they'll be needing to run flat out during the evening peak demand which also happens to be at a time when there's no solar generation.
Then in Vic and SA at 11pm rather a lot of water heaters will turn on all about the same time with that power being supplied from fossil fuels in practice. In Tas they're on right now but not in the others.
So apart from ideas of big infrastructure like batteries or pumped hydro there's also a gain to be had by changing how consumers use energy.
In Vic they've already spent serious $ on smart meters but failed to take advantage of any actual "smart" function to switch water heating loads on and off. So we end up with electricity trading at negative prices, solar farms shut down and so on then a few hours later we're ramping up gas turbines to heat water. Switching remotely and operating at times when it makes sense, which has no impact on consumers since the water is simply stored for later use anyway, would make far more sense.
SA and Tas don't have that infrastructure in place but simply choosing appropriate times to operate things like off-peak water heaters is an imperfect but overall not bad workaround. Technically that's dead easy, just change the time settings, but suffice to say there's a lot of institutional barriers in the way for both Vic and SA. In Tas virtually all off-peak loads already include supply during the afternoon so that box is already ticked.
So there's potential for emissions savings and costs savings that are going to waste here and it's technically dead easy to do it with no losers whatsoever unless you count burning less fossil fuels and saving money as a loss.
It's the kind of thing they'll "know" about a decade after they should have known if that makes sense. Not because nobody tried to tell them but because it's just too far a departure from the status quo to be readily accepted. There's a lot of "human factors" stuff there - an inability to accept that something which has been the case for longer than they've been alive isn't the case anymore.Are the State and Federal governments and energy regulators aware of this or is it just too much of a fiddly detail to bother their giant brains with ?
You must be sitting around in hour undies[emoji1]The current temperature in my dining room is 43 degrees.
The cat is lying flat on its back, legs stretched out, thinking it's all rather nice.
I think I've put enough wood on the fire already.....
PS - That's not a joke, the thermometer does actually say 43. So if you're going to light a fire then you may as well do it properly, right?
You must be sitting around in your undies[emoji1]
The cat's naked actually. Always is though apart from normal fur.
It's down to 34 degrees now. Oddly feels a bit chilly after 43.
Prep is everything.The current temperature in my dining room is 43 degrees.
The cat is lying flat on its back, legs stretched out, thinking it's all rather nice.
I think I've put enough wood on the fire already.....
PS - That's not a joke, the thermometer does actually say 43. So if you're going to light a fire then you may as well do it properly, right?
So get it up to 46 and see if your aircon still works.
Doubtless that will be ......
Fireproof cats may be valuable in a warmer world......
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Cats are actually fireproof I think. Sits way too close to the fire but it doesn’t seem to cause any issues.
Fireproof cats may be valuable in a warmer world......
Had a dog set himself alight once.I had a cat that would sit too close to the fire and start to burn. Instead of getting up to move he would hiss and growl at the fire. I would physically have to pick him up and move him.
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